Grape Juice
by Aconite72
Summary: Troubled by her best friend's apparent lack of romantic interest and how she still stubbornly clung to her V-card, Piper set a diabolical plan into motion to hook Persephone Jackson up with a random, blonde-haired barista. The only problem, obviously, being Penny's terrible self-confidence. (Genderbent! Percy/Annabeth)


**Hi.**

**I've been wanting to try my hands at something new in a while, it's getting a little bit stale writing het. So in my bout of ingenuity, I decided to still stick with my OTP (Percabeth) but with a twist by genderbending Percy.**

**I dunno, what do you guys think about this?**

* * *

Penny knew that something was very, _very_ wrong half an hour into their group hangout.

Piper had been saying virtually nothing for the last thirty minutes. Not even to Jason or when one of the girls started to talk about an upcoming, high profile movie that apparently everyone and their mothers were looking forward to. Instead, her kaleidoscopic eyes had locked themselves onto Penny's face while doing that thing with her own face Piper did whenever she _really_ wanted to say something but couldn't.

It's like the thought was causing her physical pain from the way her perfectly trimmed eyebrows scrunched up in absolute frustration. The way she gnawed on her bottom lip like it's going to solve all of her problems if she could tear it into pieces. Or the way she kept covertly muttering curses underneath her breath.

If Penny wasn't her best friend, she would be afraid for her life from the deranged, axe-murderer look that Piper was sporting. But even when she was armed with the knowledge that Piper didn't actually want to chop her into smaller pieces and scatter them in ditches all over a forest somewhere, that time was definitely one of the most stressful group hangouts she had ever had.

Penny wiped a droplet of cold sweat from her forehead.

"So …" Piper finally spoke up when the group lull into a pause after Grover had told them everything about the nature conservation project he's about to do the following month.

"So …" Penny mirrored, narrowing her eyes a little bit. She knew where this was going.

"So …" Piper McLean also narrowed her eyes and their friends started to glance at one another in confusion of the sudden change of mood between the two girls.

"Have you found any …"

Penny threw her head back and gave out so loud and … inhuman a groan that the entire coffee shop threw a look her way. _So it's _that_ thing_.

"It's been _forever_ since I talked to you about this!" Piper screeched indignantly.

"We literally talked about this yesterday!"

"Ladies, ladies." Jason threw an arm around his girlfriend and drew her into his chest. "Calm down, what's going on."

"Persephone still doesn't have a date!" Even though her face was smooched against Jason's chest, everyone could still hear her muffled voice fine.

"Let her be, Piper." Will Solace put his half-drank Cappuccino down on the table. "She won't die without one, believe me."

"Amen." Penny crossed her arms.

"But I feel bad." Piper pushed herself away from Jason. "You're the only single _and_ virgin left standing in the entire group, Pen. I _can't_ let this go on in good conscience!"

"_Piper_!" Penny squeaked and she felt her cheeks almost burst into flame at the mention of her sad love life and non-existent sex life.

But it didn't mean that Piper wasn't right in her assessment. Piper was with Jason and next to the couple was Grover and his girlfriend Juniper. Next to that was Leo and his girlfriend Calypso, then Frank and the object of his obsession: Hazel. Tucked into the corner was Nico and his boyfriend Will.

Penny was the odd one out by her lonesome.

"I swear you only need to put a _bit_ of an effort and you'll have people in line to worship you." Piper sighed dramatically and Penny instinctively rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, sure."

Persephone had always been self-conscious about her appearance. Growing up being called a witch and a bunch of unkind words slapped across her face by her first step-dad, Penny's never been the kind that's confident when it comes to flirting. Or even basic social interactions. Matter of fact is that if Piper hadn't picked her up and more or less adopted her in sixth grade, Penny was sure that she would have zero friends all through high school.

"I have to agree with Piper on this one, Pen. You're … uh …-" Hazel muttered meekly from her spot next to Frank.

"Hot as hell?" Piper suggested and the girl nodded mutely.

Mutters of approval went through the entire group. Surprisingly, even Nico - the quietest of the bunch - spoke up. She could feel the oppression and awkwardness coming from every single one of his pore.

After all, he _did_ had a crush on her before he found Will ...

"You all don't need to feed my ego, it's already dead." She deadpanned.

Piper stilled suddenly and Penny felt an instant chill shot through her spine. She knew that face. Piper was _scheming_ and the end results would either be catastrophic or apocalyptic.

"How about …"

"Whatever you're planning, I want no part in it."

"Jeez, chicken much?"

"_Cluck cluck cluck_ I don't care, just don't get me involved."

Penny picked up her cup of latte from the coaster and couldn't help but sigh when the sweet nectar of perfectly brewed coffee and a diabetic-inducing amount of sugar lanced through her bloodstream.

Piper didn't give up easily, though. She sat up and leaned over the table so that her face was only five inches away from hers.

"See that cute blonde over the counter?"

Now even though she said that she wanted no part in Piper's mischief, she never said that she didn't want to _know_. Curious, Penny sat the coffee cup gently back down the coaster it came with and turned her head.

It took her less than half a second to find Piper's target.

The _'cute blonde'_ barista was pressing some buttons on the cash register, her face upturned into a soft smile as she spoke with a customer. All of them (Their friends included) watched her with a creepy, collective fascination as she swiped the man's card through the register and gave him the receipt with a big smile.

_The most adorable smile that Persephone had ever, _EVER_ seen._

"Huh, you never said you pan that way, too."

Penny blinked and tore her eyes away from the girl. Whatever anxiety she had felt before doubled when she saw the knowing and evil look on Piper's face.

"Did I?"

Penny shook her head lightly and her hair fell into a curtain to take the heat of Piper's eyes off of her face. Even if it was only for a little bit. She knew that the tomato-red colour of her face right then was extremely telling and Penny couldn't make herself to satisfy Piper further with her embarrassment.

"You're going to ask for her number and a date, _now_."

"No."

"Now."

"No."

"I mean it Persephone. The worst thing that's going to happen is she would say no and you'd never meet her again." Piper whined. "And who can say no to you?"

"Probably her." Penny jabbed her thumb at the clueless barista's way.

"_Probably_. You don't know that."

"Oh, and you do?" Penny narrowed her eyes. "I can smell defeat all the way from her."

The other, flawlessly-beautiful girl once again lapsed into a short bout of silence before a mischievous grin bloomed on her cherry red lips.

"If you can get her number, I'll let you come with me to Hawaii."

Their friends who had been watching their back-and-fourths in amusement since the beginning all stared at Piper as if she's an alien. Even Penny did stop her protest for a single second and actually started to consider it when the invitation sank in.

Everyone knew it was her dream to visit Hawaii.

To quote one of her three A.M. text in the group chat: _"If a 70-year-old rich old dude wanted me to be his side chick in return for a week in Maui, I would totally go for it."_

Her father - Poseidon Jackson - was once a fisher out of Honolulu before he was lost at sea when she turned 7. She was too young to remember much about him and he was not home frequently to begin with. But she could still recall warm peals of laughter and sea salt in the fuzzy days that he came home.

In a way, Penny considered it a home she had never gotten the chance to visit. And for it being the last piece of land Poseidon Jackson had come back to ... a pilgrimage for the image of her lost father.

For Piper to hold that hostage was a low blow.

On one part, she wanted to lash out at her best friend. But on the other hand, she remembered she had never told any of them why she wanted to go to Hawaii so much.

So before she went super-nova and did or say something she would regret ...

She sighed.

"Fine."

_Look at the things I do for you, Dad._

"Are you serious about it, though?"

Penny couldn't help but be sceptical albeit she knew Piper travelled all the time and her family was loaded. What with both of her parents being superstars in Hollywood with their faces and the last name _'McLean'_ frequently printed on the front pages of all kind of gossip magazines and tabloids you could think of.

"We'll be on vacation. My parents love you even more than me at this point so I don't see why they won't fit you into the plan."

The one perk of being best friend with Piper McLean since first grade up until then was that Penny got her own keys into the house, a separate closet, and her own bedroom in their giant mansion. She practically spent half of her life at the McLean's.

"You can do it, _woo_." Juniper did a quiet, hyper-awkward version of a cheer and Grover couldn't help but crack up laughing at the pathetic attempt.

He quietened down immediately when she threw him a ferocious glare.

"This is going to be interesting." Will kicked back on his seat and gave her an expectant look.

"Dude, you just told everyone not to force me into a relationship." Penny rested her hands on her hips, a little irked how quick her only ally turned on her.

"It was a suggestion." He shrugged. "You're going to do it anyway so I better just enjoy it."

Her left eye twitched.

"I honestly have no idea how I'm friend with you all."

"Love you, sis." Piper winked. "Go on, little one. Give us a good show."

And that's how she found herself strolling forehead-first into trouble, trying her best to keep her knees from buckling out of fright.

A little way off from the counter, Penny swallowed hard and looked down at herself to see if she was presentable.

A cosy black-and-white striped sweater that's about two sizes bigger than her frame, its sleeves long enough to cover her hands against the New York's cold as December kicked into its chilliest gear. Below that, she's got a pleated, black mini-skirt (At the insistence of Piper, her words: "Keep it chic") and tights to keep her legs from turning into popsicles. Then black ankle boots to keep her toes from being frost-bitten and fell off somewhere.

Her hair was still probably the long, tangled mess that it had always been. With the help of some industrial-strength hair products, fortunately, she had managed to take semi-control of it and coaxed it into being nice on that day. The curls looked only a bit windswept instead of frizzy, and that's a win in her book.

She looked ... nice.

Maybe.

_Chicks dig the dishevelled look, right?_

About ten feet from the counter, the grey eyes of the barista came up to meet Penny's own sea-green.

A lance of painful anxiety shot through her heart. She could feel her brain shut down in real-time as she stood there rooted in one place, staring wide-eyed at the barista like a deer in front of headlights. The grey eyes that were looking back at her felt as if they could read the jumbled mess inside of her head.

So not only Penny felt the anxiety of having to ask this girl out _only because she wanted to go to Hawaii_. She also felt a wave of self-consciousness hit her like an aircraft carrier.

"Hi!" The barista spoke first and she flashed her that smile.

_She's totally weirded out._ Her sub-consciousness screamed inside of her head. _Now she thinks you're a weirdo! Haha, great job Persephone._

"... hi." She croaked out painfully.

"What will you be having today?"

Penny peeked at the name tag stuck on her apron.

_Annabeth._

That's a nice name.

"Uhh ... I haven't thought that, um, far ... just yet." She mumbled under her breath.

It was the truth.

Penny cursed herself, her life, and Piper as she just stood there like an idiot. She was so transfixed on _approaching_ the barista, she completely forgot about _what to say_ after she did.

"Okay!" Annabeth said cheerily. She didn't seem to be bothered by Penny's bumbling (Which was a total relief): "I can recommend you some of our best drinks if you want to hear it!"

"Uh, yeah, sure, you do that."

_Fu..._

"Okay, we have these new seasonal menus and a couple of hot mixes that are pretty popular these days ..."

Penny tuned out her voice then and just watched the way she moved her hands animatedly as she talked about the new menus and the new drinks she thought Penny should try out. In the meantime, her eyes wandered from the braided golden blonde curls that shone like a halo underneath the lights. How her hair contrasted with the cool, stormy grey shade of her eyes. The way her cheeks were painted with a bit red from the cold. Focused a bit and Penny could spot a faint smattering of freckles.

Never once did she stop smiling that knee-weakening smile of hers.

The barista was indeed adorable and awe-inspiringly pretty.

"So!" She clapped her hand and threw her an expectant look. "What will you be having?"

Penny blinked her eyes.

She had no idea.

_She's going to be offended that you hadn't listened to her and she's going to hate you forever._ That weird part of her brain whispered.

As much as she didn't want to listen to it, she couldn't help her heart rate pumping faster and faster with each second of silence that passed by. Her mind started to couple together words to try and save the situation.

_'__Date', 'girl', 'coffee', 'order', 'Hawaii', 'Piper', 'kills'..._

The suggestions were of no help whatsoever.

Penny was losing her mind.

And because she couldn't control herself anymore, she squeaked:

"Can I have a date?"

She slapped both of her hands over her mouth, her eyes went even wider and a furious blush grew like wildfire on her face.

_Nice going._

"I'm ... I'm sorry." Her voice came out rather pathetic. Penny felt like jumping out of the window, ran all the way home, buried herself under the duvet and probably cried a lot.

Annabeth's shoulders slumped. She looked taken aback, obviously blindsided by probably the most bizarre order she had ever gotten in her entire career in the service industry.

"Oh. That's ..."

Before she could even finish her sentence, Penny has already turned on her heels and stalked back to their table. Seeing the miserable, near-insane look on her face, all of them instantly wiped their faces clean of amusement.

Jason, being the gentleman he was, took her arm and guided her gently back into her seat.

She didn't need to explain. She didn't want to explain anything to them anyway.

"I'm so sorry Penny." Piper, realising how bad her plan to hook her up with someone had crashed, sounded extremely remorseful.

Penny didn't care much about the crying failure. She kind of expected it, as a matter of fact. But one of her greatest weaknesses was that she worried too much about what people thought of her, strangers included. The barista probably thought she was a freak and that stung. Bad.

"Oh, girl." Hazel stood up, rounding the table and gathered her into her arms.

It comforted her a little bit. Juniper and Piper both stood up from their seats. The boys, getting the hints, shuffled a little bit, too. Soon enough, Penny got all of the girls next to her soothing her raging anxiety away with hugs and whispered nice words.

_"__Eherm"._

A strange, angelic voice broke through their small comfort bubble and all of them looked up.

The barista was standing there a bit shyly over them.

"Yes?" Juniper spoke for the group.

"You never told me your name." Annabeth looked directly at the mess that was Penny.

"Oh, I'm Penny." She sat a bit straighter and untangled herself from the hugging arms around her.

"That's a pretty name. Nice to meet you, Penny." Annabeth smiled pleasantly and produced a black marker from the pocket of her green apron. Penny watched, completely bewildered as Annabeth wrote something down into the side of the large takeaway cup she got in her hand.

"Here, on the house. The Noggaccino's the rage of the season."

Penny's mouth dropped wide open like a goldfish when the barista winked.

... her mouth was still open an entire minute after Annabeth had walked away.

She looked down at the steaming cup on the table and held it out into the light, reading the neat letters written to the side.

_917-486-5856. I'm off at 6. Cute outfit ;)_

"Well well." Piper peeked over her shoulder. "Looks like someone's got a date."

Everyone cheered, breaking the comfortable silence of the coffee. Some cranky New Yorkers threw some scandalised and annoyed looks their way but Penny didn't care.

She was too shocked processing how, for the first time in her life, she managed to socially-awkward-ed her way into a hot date.

* * *

Persephone was on the verge of passing out.

She's never been a fan of surprise and she's not a good improviser. But _dating_ \- that weird activity sociable adults love to do - is composed of both. Unfortunate for her, in about ...

Her eyes flitted up to read the small number on her smartphone's display.

_Ten minutes._

... she would be going on a date for the very, very first time.

And she had no idea what to do to make it _good_.

Just like old wine, she believed, the more people dated, the better they would be at it. If so then she'd be a poor, ole box of grape juice.

_Extra virgin grape juice._

She wondered what Annabeth would think when she finally finished her shift and came up to her only to see her having a mental breakdown in the corner booth.

Yes, being good friends they were, they decided that they would leave early so Penny and Annabeth could have the privacy they needed to, as Leo had eloquently put it: _"Have hot lesbian action"_ (He was whacked upside the head and was told to sleep on the couch for the week by Calypso afterwards.)

She's been by her lonesome for the past two hours. Opening dozens of tabs and scouring through every website and stupid blogs she could find whose titles all went something like: _"100+ Date Ideas to Bring Your Hot, Hot Date On"._

Penny wasn't sure if dragging Annabeth skydiving was an appropriate _'Nice-to-Meet-You'_ date.

Then that dreaded, beautiful voice spoke over her shoulders.

"I'm not a fan of jumping out of perfectly functioning airplanes."

Penny turned her head and there she was.

Annabeth was no longer wearing an apron. Instead, she now sported a dark trench coat, jeans, and leather boots. If Penny wasn't about to go on a date with her, even she would be jealous at how effortless Annabeth pulled the look.

"Hi." Penny flashed a shy grin and instinctively ran her hand through her wild mane of hair just in case a strand or two stuck up in the wrong places.

"Don't worry, you look cute." Annabeth shook her head with a small smile, catching Penny's straying hand and gently lowered them to her side.

She felt like fainting and hyper-ventilating. Maybe both.

"Holy sh...-"

"Shall we?" Annabeth looked up at Penny under her eyelashes and she could do absolutely nothing but gave a muted nod.

It barely occurred in her head that she was about a head taller than the blonde who was dragging her through the cafe and out into the streets. It probably looked a bit comical to bystanders: A cheery, 5'5" ball of blonde energy dragging a shell-shocked and infinitely anxious 6'0" wide-eyed-stiff-as-board human statue down the street.

"Decided on what to do just yet?" She finally looked back after they walked for a while.

"... no?" Penny muttered.

"Well, I just so happen to be starving. I know this great pizza place only a few minutes away, wanna come?"

Penny didn't look at her face, instead, she just stared at their interlinked hands in front of her. _Her hand's freakishly warm._

"Sounds great."

She grinned, her heart fluttering and thumping dangerously inside her rib cage.

An hour later after that strange, fumbling start on Penny's part, they were chatting over two large Meat Lovers. Usually, an hour chatting with someone would tire Penny out. Being a conversationalist wasn't exactly her forte.

The _scary_ thing was that even an hour later, she still didn't want to stop. There's something about the way that Annabeth egged her on and listened that made her wanted to talk even more. Which was unprecedented.

Penny learned that Annabeth's full name was Annabeth Olivia Chase, a born-and-raised native of the alien land that was San Francisco, California. Moved to New York half a year earlier to attend her first semester at Columbia, majoring in architecture. Though it didn't help much with the student loan, the job at the cafe helped with sorting out her living expenses. She liked classical music and her favourite colour's white (Because according to her, white marble's an underused material in contemporary architecture and she needed to stick up for it).

It didn't take long at all for Penny to realise that the other girl's smart.

_Very_ smart.

Genius smart.

The kind of intelligence you would normally expect to see in someone who's going to cure cancer in their basement only with a screwdriver and a roll of duct tape.

On Penny's part, she finally overcame the nervousness and stutters to tell Annabeth everything about herself. Her long, winding full name Persephone Atlantea Jackson. Pure blooded New Yorker, attending her second year at NYU majoring in Marine Biology which makes her a year older than Annabeth. She paid her bills by being a research assistant at the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn. She dug acoustic music and she loved blue so much that a quarter of the food colouring industry's blue food dye was probably supported solely by her for her insistence on painting everything she ate blue.

An hour went by quick to become two. Then three. Four. Five.

They talked and laughed until the waiter had to come up to them and told them that they were closing for the night.

"Where do you live?" Penny asked when they emerged back out into the streets of New York. It didn't matter that it's only forty-five minutes till midnight, the street's still bustling as if rush hour.

"Brooklyn."

"I'll walk you home." Penny offered meekly and blushed. She felt a bit weird. In all of the romantic sit-coms and novels she had read, this was the line singularly reserved for big, macho guys in suits speaking in a fancy British accent whose _'arse'_ is glued to a black Amex card.

But strangely, she pulled some excitement out of that sense of utter wrongness. A rush of adrenaline as Persephone-who-can-do-absolutely-zero-wrong-whatsoever finally broke social rules and expectations.

"No, _I'll_ walk you home. As a thank for the date."

"This is all you, though. I just ... tagged along." Penny unconsciously pouted. She felt a bit bad that even though she was the one to ask Annabeth out, the blonde more or less carried them both through the entire thing.

"Well both of us wouldn't be here if you hadn't stuttered your way into a date." Annabeth laughed. Not the kind of fake, forced laugh Penny usually had to dish out to appease people. It was the genuine, care-free laughter that made her innards felt like they had been liquidated into caramel.

_Oh, this ain't good._ Her mind yelped when the fleets of butterflies started rioting at the pleasant and weirdly sensual sound of Annabeth's laughter.

"I'm probably the weirdest date you've ever been with, am I?"

Annabeth stood on her tip-toe and ruffled Penny's hair, killing her a bit more inside.

"Not really. I've been through worse."

"No way." Penny deadpanned. No one could match her mediocrity as a date.

"Yes way."

It wasn't a short walk from Long Island City to Penny's place in Manhattan. Better yet, since it's the dead of night they also had to take the long, major routes for safety but the chatters about Annabeth's old train wrecks of dates had made the one hour walk seemed like a minute.

That was the best walk Penny's ever had, hands down. Not only she got to know more about who she had gradually learned to be an amazing person, but her ego was also stroked a little bit hearing how infinitely worse some of the dates Annabeth had had were.

At least she didn't try to introduce Annabeth to her pet tarantulas like Ninth-Grade-Freddie did, not realising that Annabeth was an extreme case of arachnophobia.

But alas, all good times came to a halting end.

"Here it is." She said when their laughter dissipated and they rounded a corner into Penny's neighbourhood.

"Cool place." She looked up at the dull apartment block. It wasn't _the best_ per se, but it's a nice place to live considering it's at the heart of Manhattan.

"It took me a year of every-day searching to find this place." She sighed. "It's ... fit for human habitation and not going to drive me into bankruptcy. Real treasure around this part of town."

Annabeth hummed. "Where did you live before you found this place?"

"My mom's. She's about five minutes away."

"Must be nice having your mom that close."

She nodded and Penny's face brightened considerably at the mention of her mom. She loved that woman to death.

"Yeah, it really is. She would love to meet you."

They walked up to the doorstep of Penny's apartment block. The rumble of car engines from the main streets afar echoed to give a nice ambient to their upcoming parting. And the yellow street lights cast an amber haze downward, lighting the exquisite, delicate lines of Annabeth's beautiful face that still managed to make Penny's breath hitched every time she took a good look at.

They stood there quietly for a minute. Both of them not wanting to end the fun so early.

"So ..."

Penny finally spoke, ending the quiet spell that had settled over them.

"So ..."

"I guess this is it."

"You're talking like we're about to die."

"Oh, okay." Penny scratched her head awkwardly.

Annabeth laughed at her obvious discomfort.

"I've had a really good time, Penny."

"Really? I mean … I don't even have a plan and I kinda just followed you around and being weird you're probably a bit …" She started picking her nails as a nervous habit. "… let down."

"You're adorable." Annabeth said simply and Penny made a sound like a dying rat was choking out for help at the back of her throat.

"Ah, um … thanks."

Penny was sure that the blood vessels on her face were being overwhelmed and could burst at any moment what with the burning heat that she felt then scalding her face.

"You need to work a little bit on your self-confidence. It's critically low." Annabeth lightly punched her shoulder.

"It's like I hadn't thought of doing that ever." She rolled her eyes.

"What happened to all of the attempts?"

"My sense of security sank lower each time I tried." Penny moaned miserably.

"Oh dear, we have to get that sorted out in the future."

Penny stilled and narrowed her eyes. That sounded like …

"Is that an invitation?"

She couldn't help a dumb grin from sprouting on her face.

"It depends. You gonna take it?" Annabeth chuckled.

"Sure," Penny said. "But …"

"But what?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Penny asked nervously, tugging at the sleeve of her sweater. Her eyes instinctively avoided the sharp, focused look of Annabeth's grey orbs, finding purchase instead on the dark asphalt of the road behind them. The question's been roasting slowly in her mind for the last couple of hours and she just wanted to get it out of her system as quick as possible.

"Back there at the cafe … what did you see in me? I mean, I'd probably be weirded out by myself if I were you."

Annabeth's eyes squinted, a little bit offended.

"I'm not toying with you if that's what you're implying."

"No no no no that's not what I meant." Penny's eyes widened and she took a step back, her hands raised in surrender. "I mean … what drove you to, um, give me a chance?"

The blonde's shoulders relaxed considerably and Penny took it as a good sign. They stood for a while as Annabeth stewed whatever answers she was trying to come up inside of her head.

The answer wasn't what Penny expected at all.

"Have anyone ever told you that you're super hot?"

She choked on her saliva and started coughing her lungs out. It was so bad that she had to bend over hacking.

"There there, let it out, let it out."

Even in the middle of her uncontrollable coughing fit, she could still hear the suppressed laughter inside of the other girl's voice. It was mortifying, needless to say.

When she finally calmed down, Penny cleared her throat and rasped out:

"No."

"Well, I just did," Annabeth smirked, her grey eyes glimmering and almost felt like they were smoking and smouldering in the dark with mirth.

"One, you looked like you were about to faint during my speech on the seasonal menu … and pretty close to dying when you did ask me out so I guessed my mind just told me that you were genuine." Annabeth started counting down. "Two, I've never really gone on a date with a girl before and, I don't know, I guess I was feeling a bit adventurous then. _No stop._"

Penny's mouth was half open.

"I don't regret it."

… and she clamped her mouth.

"Three, you're kind of hot so if I were to get it on, at least I'd get a go at the hot chick."

Penny shifted uncomfortably in place. Being complimented about her look was an alien thing to her, so to hear it for the dozenth time in the span of a few hours was a shock that she still couldn't get over.

"Four, you're cute when you're nervous. No offence but for a girl who's six feet tall you're quite literally a walking, breathing bundle of nerves."

"I would be offended …" She looked down at her feet and shuffled the hard soles of her boots against the concrete pavement, muttering weakly: "… if it wasn't true."

She suddenly found a pair of cold hands rested gingerly on her cheeks, gently moving her head and forcing her to look directly at the blonde. Her eyes were determined as she stared directly into Penny's uncertain ones.

And that's how Penny got her first kiss ever in the twenty years she had been alive. Surprisingly, it wasn't with a knight in shining armour.

It was with another princess.

The kiss started out a bit awkward because of the height difference between them and it was also made worse by Penny suddenly turning as stiff as a board from surprise. Annabeth had to physically pull Penny's head down to capture her lips in hers. The blonde's eyes were completely shut, though you can totally guess that Penny's eyes were wide open

It took her about ten seconds to process the new development.

All of her muscles relaxed and melded into the smaller girl who's been doing the bulk of the work this entire time. Their lips fitting and moving together like two living puzzle pieces that had found their match. Her arms eventually stopped being useless, finding their places on either side of Annabeth's waist by their own accord as she responded. The raven-haired girl drank everything in greedily like a woman possessed: The faint scent of freshly-juiced lemon of her skin, the faint bitterness and sweetness of coffee and cream on her lips, the softness of her flesh against her chest and underneath her hands …

Penny couldn't get enough of it all and it was driving her stupid.

But what a shame that human beings run on oxygen and five minutes of not breathing would lead to asphyxiation and brain damage.

Both of their faces were flaming red by the time they finally pulled away, breathing hard and just looking at one another with a telling look.

_I need more of ... that._

"Does that answer your question?" Annabeth said breathlessly.

"Yea … sort of." Penny finally found her voice to reply, just as out of breath as the once-nameless _'cute blonde'_ was.

"See you when I see you?"

"Yea."

"Gonna text me?"

"… yea."

"Can't say anything else, can you?"

"… yea?"

Annabeth shook her head, chuckling. She was growing rapidly fond of the bumbling giantess (Her height was seriously impressive, she should text Penny later on to ask if she played any sport). To pull her leg even further, Annabeth snuck a quick peck in.

"Good night, _Seaweed Brain._"

Turning around and walked her way back out to the main street where she could catch a cab home.

Penny stood there on her doorstep staring at the receding shadow of the blonde as she walked away. Everything on her face - specifically her lips - burning like they were smeared with chilli powder and left to dry. The girl finally turned around and walked into the building five minutes later, her head was still trying to wrap itself around everything that had happened just a couple of minutes ago. The elevator ride to her floor was spent all throughout with Penny staring at her splotchy red face through the reflection on the metal surface of the doors.

When it finally slid open, she made her way through the hall, mindlessly dug the key out of her coat's pocket then soundlessly entered her apartment.

The moment the door shut and locked, though, she collapsed with her back against the hardwood of the door.

"Seaweed Brain?"

She said aloud to her dark living room and slumped into the floor, curling herself into a ball underneath the coat stand as her brain tried in vain to fix the massive short-circuit that a certain blonde had perpetrated.

"You know, I kinda like it."

She whispered to herself as she laid there all curled up into a ball of growing euphoria and excitement. Giggling as she went through all of the events that had transpired.

Fortunately, her dark living room didn't offer its personal opinion.

* * *

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